In Search of Advice on Teaching Russian to a Deaf Student

[Susan Bauckus]

Dear Colleagues,

In the coming academic year I’ll be teaching an Elementary Russian class at a community college and one of my students is deaf. I have no experience teaching Russian to a deaf student. I’ve met with the student, his interpreter, and the college’s disability office staff and have tried to learn as much as I can from them. I suppose the general principle is to give him as many visual materials as possible, in advance when possible, and to anticipate when I need to make adaptations for him. At the same time I don’t want to limit him; his spoken English is very clear and I think he wants to learn to speak. He can read lips – I’m not sure how well – but that’s in English. (He’s actually hard of hearing, but enough to have an interpreter). 

Has anyone in this group had experience teaching a foreign language, especially one that uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet, to deaf students? If any of you has advice I’d be grateful to receive it. 

Thank you,
Susie Bauckus


Susan Bauckus
UCLA Center for World Languages
www.international.ucla.edu
Heritage Language Journal
www.heritagelanguages.org
Language Materials Project
www.lmp.ucla.edu
LA Language World
www.lalamag.ucla.edu

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